


Five Times Josef Didn't Bite

by sowell



Category: Moonlight (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-26
Updated: 2013-05-26
Packaged: 2017-12-13 00:16:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/817719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sowell/pseuds/sowell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Josef has sexual tension with, well, the world. His frustrations in a nutshell. Spoilers for all aired episodes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Josef Didn't Bite

1

  
The girl was flat out on the bed, lost in bliss from too much ecstasy and too much blood loss, and Josef was still wide awake. And definitely not done for the night. He leaned lazily over her, flicking his tongue across the small drops of blood still oozing on from the puncture marks on her arm. The flavor swirled around in his mouth, sharp and sweet with narcotics and alcohol, and he congratulated himself on making a good choice. She sighed and arched, and he took dropped a regretful kiss on her skin and put her arm away from him. She didn’t have much more to give, and the last thing he needed was another slap on the wrist from the cleaner from a meal taken too far. “Thanks for dinner,” he whispered in her ear, and then he was gone, carrying his jacket over his shoulder as he headed out into the night.   
  
The thing he loved most about the eighties was the excess. Women in five inch heels and ten thousand dollar dresses with too much makeup, drinking too much gin, laughing too loudly and playing too hard. It’s not that freshies were ever particularly hard to come by, but for the last few years it had been like water flowing. He could get drunk on it – the easy meals, the easy pussy, the easy glamour of it all. Every decade had its charm, but Josef was feeling very much in charity with 1988 as he strolled along the yellow-lit sidewalk.   
  
His favorite bar was wall to wall with stockbrokers and married white-collar citizens looking to spend money and get laid. Another great thing about the eighties: more ways than ever to make money without lifting a finger. As he brought his gin and tonic to his lips, he made a mental note to talk to Steve over in Pasadena about getting into the stock market.   
  
Her hair caught his eye first. It was red. Thick, deep, flaming, glorious, Irish red. It was all piled on her head like she was attending a state dinner, and it clashed with the blush on her pale, creamy cheeks. She was all alone, which was surprising in and of itself. Attractive women didn’t stay alone for very long in this sort of place. He saw several pairs of male eyes watching her, but he was faster.   
  
“Hi,” he said, giving her his easiest, most congenial, most  _harmless_  smile. She jumped a little, flashing nervous blue eyes up at him. Her eyelashes were a thick red-gold, and there were freckles under the powder on her face. She couldn’t be more than twenty-five years old, maybe twenty-six at the most. Young blood, running through young veins, underneath perfect skin and a body he could tell was curved in all the right places.   
  
She was shy, which was fine with him. He didn’t mind putting effort into it, if the prize was worth it. He bought her three martinis and a shot of vodka, and ninety minutes later she was stumbling against him in the alley behind the club, meeting his mouth with the all the heat and energy he could want. Josef wondered if maybe he’d gotten a little drunk, too, because she tasted impossibly sweet.   
  
He put his hands under her skirt, beneath the predictably demure panties, and made her come. She made a sound somewhere in between a cry and a moan, and went limp in his arms. Now was the time to do it – now when she was still in such a fog that she’d barely notice a nip at her neck. He lowered his mouth to her sweat-damp skin, then stopped.   
  
She was crying.   
  
He froze. Shit. He wouldn’t put it past himself to make a woman cry from an orgasm, but somehow it didn’t sound like those kinds of tears. She was trying to hold it back, sniffling and hiccupping and biting her lip, but she was doing a piss-poor job of it.   
  
He let his eyes rest longingly on the curved juncture between her neck and shoulder. He could pretend he hadn’t noticed. By the time she pulled herself together she’d be a few pints lighter and none the wiser. Except she’d gone still and silent in reaction to his own tension, and much as he hated to admit it, his libido and his hunger were falling fast. Four hundred years old and he still hadn’t figured out how to deal with a girl’s tears.   
  
He swore inwardly.   
  
“Are you all right?” he asked her, gently enough not to scare her, but cool enough to discourage any long-winded explanations.   
  
It didn’t work.   
  
“I’m sorry,” she said, letting the tears flow freely again. “I’m fine. It’s just, I just broke up with my boyfriend – he cheated on me – and I thought maybe I could come here and forget about him. Just fuck someone else, you know? I mean, that’s what he said to me when I found out. ‘I just fucked someone else,’ like it wasn’t a big deal, like I wouldn’t even care, and – ”   
  
She took his proffered handkerchief, and he winced as she blew her nose loudly into the monogrammed silk. Her tears were making tracks through her makeup, and with all the lipstick rubbed off her mouth looked very pale.   
  
He had an awful premonition. He racked his brain for her name. Carla? Callie? Cleo?   
  
Chloe. It was Chloe.   
  
“Chloe,” he said, not bothering to hide the danger in his voice this time. “How old are you?”   
  
“Twenty-three?” she said hesitantly. He raised his eyebrows.   
  
“Sixteen,” she said in a small voice.   
  
By the time he managed to bundle Ms. Jailbait into a cab, the bar was closing down for the night. He’d given the last of his cash to Chloe for the ride, so he took the northern route home. Jumping from building to building was risky, but it was a hell of a lot faster than walking the streets. Besides, he had some frustration to work off.   
  
Mick’s apartment was almost half an hour closer than his own house, but if he went to Mick’s he’d have to explain why he was heading home alone on a Thursday night. There were some things you never told, no matter how long you lived.   
  


2

  
“You don’t understand.”   
  
Mick was agitated, running his hands through his hair over and over until Josef wanted to cut them off.   
  
“I understand,” he said in a bored voice. “Coraline kidnapped a little girl, you saved the day, everyone’s happy. Well, except Coraline. Hold still,” he said to the dark-haired girl curled against his side. He held her steady, the vulnerable skin of her inner arm facing off against his cavernous ceiling. Ugly ceiling, he noticed. Time to redecorate. He was careful not to scratch her as he herded the white powder into a straight line on her arm. He’d already done enough coke to kill a mortal, but he had no intention of stopping any time soon. At some point he might even begin to feel it.   
  
Mick stopped his pacing for a minute to stare at him. “Coraline is  _dead_ ,” he said in disbelief. “She almost killed a child, and now she’s dead. Don’t you care?”   
  
“Yes, I care,” Josef snapped. “I care that she’s turning you into a raving lunatic, even from the grave.” He inhaled the powder in one smooth motion, and Lila giggled next to him. “Tickles, doesn’t it?” he said to her, caressing her chin. “I can take care of that.”   
  
He leaned down to taste her for real, but Mick pushed between them. “I need a minute,” Mick said to Lila impatiently. “Go find something else to do.”   
  
She opened her mouth to protest, but Josef cut her off with a quick shake of his head. She flounced off to join the party still audible from the other room.   
  
“I was in the middle of something,” Josef said silkily, getting to his feet. Mick had sense enough to take a step back.   
  
“I just,” Mick pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead, and Josef could almost pity him. “You knew her for hundreds of years. She was my wife, she was your friend, and now she’s gone. How can you just keep on…doing  _this_?” He gestured disgustedly at the disarray all around them – the empty cocktail glasses, the discarded pieces of clothing, the remnant of white powder dusting the coffee table. “How can you just sit here like nothing happened?”   
  
Mick wouldn’t know. He couldn’t see, Josef realized. He saw the party, he saw the girls, and all he could figure was that tonight was like every other night. He was too young to know the blackness of losing someone who’d been alive for hundreds of years, to feel the emptiness of someone like Coraline snuffed out. Even if it was necessary; even if she deserved it.   
  
“Yeah, well,” Josef said with effort. “Life goes on, right? Or, unlife anyway.”   
  
For the first time ever, Mick was looking at him like he was a monster.   
  
“Look,” Josef said cajolingly. “Go back to the party, get a drink, find a freshie. You’ll feel better.”   
  
Lila had crept back to the edges of the room, watching them sullenly, and he pulled her against his side. “Mick’s nursing a broken heart,” he told her, half for her ears and half for Mick’s benefit. “You can find him a girl, right babe?”   
  
Mick was shaking his head. “You’re unbelievable.”   
  
“Fine,” Josef said lightly. “If you’d rather share Lila…” He slid his hand up her bare arm, holding her wrist out his friend in offering.   
  
“No!” Mick said wildly, stumbling back. “This is enough! I’m serious Josef. No more killing, no more drinking from humans, no more being…”   
  
“A vampire?” Josef said, raising an eyebrow.   
  
“Like Coraline,” Mick bit out.   
  
Josef sank back into the couch with a long-suffering sigh. Lila curled up next him again, and Mick stood staring at them both. Defiant. Josef regarded him through half-lidded eyes. Mick had a flare for the dramatic, but he’d never seen him quite so worked up.   
  
“What, exactly, are you planning to do?” he asked. “Start raiding farm animals, set rat traps in the alley? Or would that be unfair to the rats?”   
  
“I don’t know,” Mick admitted, and his hands were back in his hair. Then he snapped his fingers. “Blood banks. I could get blood from blood banks.”   
  
Josef made a face. “Hardly dignified, but I guess you could.”   
  
“I will,” Mick said emphatically. “I’m telling you, I’m done with all of this.”   
  
Mick had a manic light in his eyes, and Josef realized he’d lost his taste for baiting his friend, at least for the moment.   
  
“Fine. Go do that,” he said shortly. “I’ll be here,  _not_  wasting eternity.”   
  
Suddenly Mick grinned, a shocking turnaround from his previous agitation. “Not a waste,” he said. “You’ll see.”   
  
Lila barely waited until Mick was out the door before sliding loose fingers beneath his shirt. “That was weird,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Now where were we?”   
  
She straddled his hips smoothly and rose above him in a practiced motion, letting her hair fall over both shoulders. She knew he liked to move her hair himself, gather it up and push it off her neck before he bit.   
  
He stared moodily up at her for a moment before shifting her off his lap and standing up. She made an indignant noise as she slid off the sofa.  
  
“I lost my appetite,” he said, keeping his back to her. “You’ll have to find someone else.”   
  
There was a moment of silence. Then, in a dangerous voice, “Are you kicking me out? Again? Because if I leave now, you can forget about calling me the next time you need a snack.”   
  
He turned around. “Goodbye,” he said coolly.   
  
He stared out at the night for a long time after she was gone. He wondered if Mick was somewhere, circling the names of blood banks in the phone book, scouring the news for the next vampire he could put down.   
  
He couldn’t remember the face of his mother or sister, but he could remember every vampire comrade he’d lost along the way. Coraline’s eyes burned in his brain, the newest loss. For some reason he felt like Mick was slipping away, too, with his sudden epiphany, his new lease on life.   
  
It’s a good thing it was just a phase.   
  


3

  
  
Coraline breezed in as the sky was beginning to lighten. She was three hours late, but then, that was nothing new.   
  
Her cheeks were flushed with color, and Josef knew she must have fed recently. Sure enough, a freshie stumbled in after her, tie loosened, shirt rumpled, and two vivid puncture marks seeping blood on his neck. He was staring at her in mute worship.   
  
“I met the man I’m going to marry tonight,” she announced, tossing her clutch onto the endless kitchen counter. The diamond-studded zipper winked in the gathering light as the bag slid across the smooth surface.   
  
Her hair was tousled, her slinky dress drooping off of one shoulder, her lips pink. She had a way of looking well-fucked all the time, whether she was dressed in a thousand dollar Chanel suit or wearing nothing but a towel and wet hair. Josef found it endlessly fascinating. He’d thought, when he first met her, that if he could bottle her appeal and sell it on the open market he’d be a rich man. Well, richer. Now, he shuddered to think. One Coraline was enough.   
  
He flicked his eyes over the dinner she’d brought them. The man was still staring at Coraline, dazed. Josef sighed.   
  
“Your betrothed looks a little shaky,” he pointed out. “Maybe you should give him a rest before the wedding.”   
  
“Oh, not him,” she said dismissively, waving her hand. “Sit down, John,” she ordered sharply. John sank into the nearest chair. Josef watched her step out of her impossibly high heels, slouched in his own chair. Coraline fell in love once a month. She usually ended up eating her lovers.   
  
“He’s a musician,” she said dreamily. “But he’s not just that. There’s so much there, I can tell. Dark eyes. And the way he looked at me…” A smile curved her lips, and Josef’s sympathies shifted involuntarily to her poor musician.   
  
“And he’s handsome,” she continued. She looked at him out of the corner of her eyes, dangerously coquettish. “Better looking than you, Josef.”   
  
“I’m devastated,” he said. “Can we eat?”   
  
The clench of her jaw was so subtle that he almost missed it. If he hadn’t known her for ninety years he probably would have. She got like this whenever she was looking for more than just a dining companion. She’d gone out and teased some human to madness, gotten herself all worked up in the process, and now she wanted someone else to throw her against a wall and fuck her. Usually he was happy to oblige, but tonight he was hungry, tired, and not in the mood to hear about her next conquest.   
  
He stood abruptly. “See the sun?” he said, pointing out her decadently expansive windows. “That means I have an hour, maybe less, to get back across town. And since I’ve been waiting for you all night – in  _your_  house – you’ll have to forgive me if I’m not in the mood to chat.”   
  
She lifted her eyebrows, anger smoldering under her cool expression. “Fine,” she said carelessly.   
  
She glided over to her freshie, who had begun to look very pale. Josef saw the change in Coraline’s visage reflected in the expression of her guest/prisoner an instant before she sank her fangs into him. There was horror on his face, then confusion, and then a pervasive blankness as she began to drain him.   
  
Coraline straddled him to give her better leverage, and Josef wasn’t so annoyed that he couldn’t appreciate the way it drew her dress tight around her bottom, outlining her hips, her waist, and her gorgeous, endless legs. Her ugly mood was written in every vicious jerk of her body, and Josef knew this particular human wouldn’t make it through the night. He could probably even find it in himself to be sorry, if he wasn’t so damned  _hungry_.   
  
He felt the change in his own face, felt the hunger rise almost uncontrollably. The smell of blood was sharp and inviting all around him, and he lowered his fangs to the neck stretched limply in front of him. The blood was running more slowly now, but it was still running, and Josef’s skin prickled in anticipation.   
  
He was stopped short by a hand against his chest, shoving him backward. Coraline lifted her head, and there was mischief in her eyes and blood on her lips.   
  
“I changed my mind,” she said smoothly. “I feel like eating alone tonight.”   
  
He gaped.   
  
“I’ll see you around,” she said sweetly. Her eyes gleamed triumphantly in the face of his speechless anger.   
  
“Coraline,” he said warningly.   
  
“Goodnight,” she said, and turned back to her meal. He slammed the door on the way out, hearing her laughter echo through the house.   
  


4

  
“A-are you hurt?”   
  
Beth loomed over him, her young face pulled into anxious lines.   
  
“I got shot,” Josef said darkly. “What do you think?” The fucking bullet was like fire in his shoulder, spreading all down his arm and through his back. He braced himself against the wall and tried to push upwards, only to slide back down to the floor.   
  
Beth was twisting her hands in front of her. “Mick always just gets back up when he gets shot,” she said helplessly.   
  
“Well, goody for Mick,” he muttered. Something was wrong. The cold fire spreading through his limbs wasn’t right. His legs were losing feeling, and arms felt heavy.   
  
Beth knelt in front of him, prodding tentatively at his shoulder. “Maybe if I can get the bullet out…”   
  
“Don’t,” he snarled, and she jumped. Everything seemed to shift in their dim little prison. The boxes stacked in the corner leapt into sharp focus, he could pick out each strand of her golden hair, and most of all, he could see the blood beneath her thin skin, wrapping around every inch of her body, pushed along by her quickly beating heart. His teeth lengthened and sharpened behind his lips, and he could suddenly hear every breath she took.   
  
She stared at him in shock, and he knew his eyes must have turned their eerie silver.   
  
“Josef, you’re all –” she gestured at her own face, as though he didn't already have a perfect picture of what a vampire looked like.   
  
He shoved her fingers out of the way and tried to stand again. This time he got nearly all the way to his feet before collapsing in a heap again.   
  
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he said, letting his head drop back against the wall.   
  
She was looking at him with dawning understanding. “I’ve seen this happen before,” she said, biting her lip. “Mick, when I first met him, he- The bullet was silver.” It wasn’t a question.   
  
He bared his fangs in the cockiest grin he could manage at the moment. “Give the girl a prize.”   
  
“They must have known what you were.” Her blue eyes were huge as they ran over him, weighing, assessing. “I need to get the bullet out,” she said finally. “It’s poisoning you.”   
  
“I think we’re beyond the present tense,” he said with a grimace. The silver was in his system, sapping his strength, making their little prison waver and tip around him.   
  
She met his eyes for a long, pregnant second. “What do I need to do?” she asked shakily.   
  
“It’s not too far in,” he said. “I think my clavicle stopped it.”   
  
She blanched, but seemed to steady herself. “Okay.” She breathed. “Okay. So I just – ” She made a moved to touch the ragged hole in his skin.   
  
“Hold it, Dr. Blackwell,” he said, snapping his teeth at her.   
  
She fell silent as he adjusted himself against the wall, trying to flatten his shoulder. He brought his other hand up to pull at the wound, feeling the best place for her little fingers to pry into him. He was having trouble lifting his arm.   
  
“I’d do it,” he said, a ghost of an apology in his tone, “but I don’t think I can make a fist right now. Just put your fingers in, find the bullet-shaped thing, and grab.”   
  
She leaned over him, breasts pressing lightly against his chest, and the fantasy hit him in a quick, stunning succession of visuals. One arm around her waist, fangs buried in her soft neck, and he could take enough blood to get some strength, rip the damned bullet out himself.   
  
If he killed her, Mick would have his head. Literally.   
  
She hesitated, and he looked up at her troubled face. “Do it, Beth. You have to do it.”   
  
The prod of her fingers under his skin was agony. Every touch was like knives, and he almost wished he would pass out. Her scent was floating over him like a cloud, the sweet, young smell of her mixing all up with the blinding pain until he couldn’t tell if he wanted more or wanted to die. And she was being too gentle.   
  
“It’s deeper,” he gasped. “Go deeper.”   
  
Her face was white, but she set her jaw and prodded deeper. Her soft hair against his jaw was a torture all its own, and he had the fleeting thought that Mick must be a very strong man, indeed. He felt it through his whole body when her fingers jarred the bullet.   
  
“It’s stuck,” she said, eyebrows drawing together, and he suddenly knew that if she didn’t hurry he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from taking her.  
  
“You won’t kill me, so stop being careful,” he growled. “Get it the fuck out of me.”   
  
She made a distressed noise, but her fingers closed hard around the lump of poisonous metal in him, and she pulled it free in one agonizing jerk.   
  
The world seemed to explode behind his eyes, and for a minute he wasn’t sure that she hadn’t killed him after all. He struggled to stay conscious, and somewhere in the distance Beth was shaking him and saying his name.   
  
“Thank god you’re a reporter and not a surgeon,” he managed to say faintly.   
  
“Josef!” She was shoving her arm under his nose. Her hand was covered in his black, dead blood. “Come on,” she said fiercely. “I know you need it. I’ve done this before.”   
  
He wanted to laugh at all the righteous wisdom in her young, young voice. She slid up against him, half propping him up, a knee on either side of his left leg. She put an arm on his good shoulder to anchor herself, and then they were face to face, groin to groin.   
  
“Mick is so going to kill me,” he said, light-headed. “He’d at least want to be here to watch.” He was surprised by how weak his voice sounded. He wasn’t sure he’d ever been quite so near to death before.   
  
“I think he’d rather you survive,” she said dryly.   
  
He gave her a grim smile. “You’re right. Mick’s possessive when it comes to you. It’s probably better he’s not here.”   
  
She held her arm out again, impatient for all that her fingers were trembling.   
  
“Are you sure?” he asked, giving her a last chance. “This isn’t exactly my best moment. I could take too much.”   
  
“You won’t,” she said. He had the presence of mind to be grateful for her matter-of-fact attitude. He’d need it later, when Mick was throttling him for drinking from her, for not finding another way. Mick would have found another way.   
  
But that was Mick, and Mick wasn’t here. And Josef never made an effort to do things the right way if there was an easier way available.   
  
“There’s a lighter in my pocket,” he whispered. He took her hand and fumblingly guided it to his hip, to feel the cheap zippo lighter buried beneath the hundred dollar linen. “If I go too far, use it.” He lifted the soft skin of her wrist to his mouth and felt her body brace. He waited a moment, seeing if she’d change her mind, seeing if she’d scream. Her heart was beating too fast, and her jaw was clenched, but her face was composed.   
  
He let the sensations wash over him for a dangerous second. He could smell the blood through layers of skin and bone, the heady scent of it mixing with her flowery perfume and living warmth. And then thought fled as his fangs began to press into her flesh.   
  
Everything happened very quickly after that. The door burst off its hinges with splintering force, and Mick was suddenly there, pulling Beth up and away.   
  
Then he was back, relief and concern all over his face.   
  
“Took you long enough,” Josef rasped, and Mick smiled.   
  


5

  
“Mick, just –”   
  
Josef ducked a fist just in time. Mick’s blow slammed through three layers of plaster in his office.   
  
“Listen to me!” he shouted.   
  
It was no use. Mick’s grief was rolling off him like a tangible thing, throwing up a barrier between them, infecting everything. Even, Josef thought wearily, his own centuries-old heart. He thought he’d left this kind of grief behind with Sarah.   
  
“ _You_  were supposed to protect her,” Mick growled, eyes flashing silver. He launched himself at Josef, and this time he hit his target. The floor-to-ceiling window gave under the impact, and they went crashing through the barrier and into the main lobby of his office. His secretary shrieked and people went scattering. There was glass and loose paper everywhere, and now Josef was  _pissed_. He just got his new office the way he liked it.   
  
“I tried,” Josef gritted out. “I told her not to go to that warehouse. I told her to wait until you were back from New York. She didn’t listen.” Josef just managed to avoid another fist before Mick knocked him to the ground. He wrapped his hands around Josef’s throat, trying to choke the life out of him. Which would be a good plan if Josef, you know,  _breathed_.   
  
It took very little to turn the tables. One hard shove and Mick was tumbling backward, clumsy with anger and grief. Josef picked him up by his lapels and slammed him against one of the walls that were still standing. He held him there, toes grazing the floor, twisting like a worm on a hook.   
  
“They die. We don’t,” Josef bit out. “It’s what happens. You can fight it, and you can grieve, but as long as you want to play superhero with the humans, you’re going to have to accept that.” Mick’s eyes were still clouded with shock and rage, and Josef struggled with the warring desire to both shake him out of it and help him prolong it. Because he knew what was under the anger. He knew what would come when the impulse for vengeance had subsided, and he shied away from it like he did the sun. Even a murderous Mick was better than a broken Mick.   
  
“If you’d followed her,” Mick choked out through constricted vocal chords. “If you’d called me. I could’ve stopped it. I could’ve…” The anguished words hit Josef with a familiar splat of shame. If he hadn’t been so dismissive when Beth asked for his help, if he hadn’t been preoccupied with Simone, if, if, if. The if’s had been swirling around him relentlessly since Beth’s body had been found six hours earlier, two puncture wounds in her neck and drained of blood.   
  
Josef ruthlessly let the suppositions slide off of him like mercury on metal. In the scheme of four hundred years, a few bad decisions meant very little. He couldn’t remember last century’s if’s, or the if’s from the century before that. These, too, would fade. It was the next few moments that mattered now, and whether Mick would survive.   
  
He let his friend drop. Mick stumbled, then righted himself, sparing Josef a cold glance. Then he picked up the nearest overturned chair, lifted it, and smashed it to bits on the ground. He chose the sharpest piece from the splintered pile and advanced on Josef, murder in his eyes.   
  
Josef had had enough. He caught the makeshift stake before it came anywhere near his heart, snapping it with an easy twist. He threw Mick against the secretary’s deserted executive desk, eliciting a satisfying grunt. Mick was still trying to pick himself up when Josef kicked the desk out from under him, sending it skidding across the marble floors. Mick collapsed in a painful little heap, and then Josef was on him, pinning his wrists to the floor, fangs inches from his throat.   
  
That’s when he realized Mick wasn’t fighting anymore. Josef looked and it was Mick’s human face staring back at him. And his eyes were wet.   
  
Josef slowly eased back, reigning in his temper, pulling in his claws, both literal and figurative. Mick sat up as Josef eyed him warily. He covered his face with his hands, and then his shoulders started to shake.   
  
Josef watched as Mick wept amidst the ruins of his office, sympathy and weariness weighing on him in equal measure. The anger stage was short. The grief stage would last much, much longer.   
  
“What’s the point of all this if I couldn’t even save her?” Mick said, wiping his sleeve across his eyes. His face was hollow, his shoulders were hunched and helpless, and Josef wanted to tell him a million things that he knew Mick would never listen to. Advice never helped; it never worked. Nothing was of any use but experience – minutes and seconds of life and unlife ticking by, bringing everything great and painful in an endless cycle. Mick had all the time in the world to find that out. Nothing else was real, and nothing  _but_  time would teach him that lesson.   
  
“There’s a point,” Josef said finally. “You’ve helped people. You helped her. That’s why she loved you. I don’t know why you do it, but I know it makes a difference.”   
  
Mick looked up, face still wet with tears. He took a shuddering breath. “I don’t know what I’m going to do now.”   
  
Find the next bad guy, save the next little girl; face the next sunrise, make it through the next day.   
  
Josef put a firm hand on the back of Mick’s neck, so like a living person’s. “You’ll figure it out.”


End file.
